NURHI refurbishes hospital building for family planning services

[Mirror]

As part of its mandate to ease accessibility to family planning facilities and commodities in Nigerian urban cities, the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, NURHI, has renovated a section of the Bwari General Hospital, in Abuja.

State Team Leader of NURHI, Mrs Adebusola Salako, said the project tagged "72-hour site" was to make families have more convenient while adopting family planning.

Quality Improvement and Service-Rendering Officer of the organization, Mrs Omobola Odutolu, stated NURHI was more encouraged by public appreciation of family planning, especially religious leaders whom she said had been helping in the promotion of family services; "hence, the need to make the service environment more accessible to the public and suitable for service providers."

Medical Director of the hospital, Dr Aloysius Ebedi, said of the intervention: "Before NURHI came, we had the family planning services but we had a serious problem of logistics in the sense that the site we were using was fully inadequate. They now came and improved on our services by upgrading what we had on ground.

"We now have a bigger space now, fully-equipped. We've got the equipment and the materials and more and more people are coming to access our services. Before they (NURHI) came, we were attending to like seven people but now we have about 40 accessing our facilities.

"The people are happy with us and we are hoping to reach out to more of them because there has been tremendous improvement as a result of their intervention," Dr Ebedi added. He called on families to embrace family planning as a way of having a healthier and more prosperous family.

"Family planning is very important because the family is the basic unit of society. Without the family there is no society. No one has limitless resources and one child is at least a 25-year commitment to provide. And most fathers have no resources to provide for many children. So, absolutely, if we are to get the best for our children, we need to reduce the number of children that we have and space them. It is crucial to the mother's health too.

"To break the cycle of poverty, children have to be trained. If the children are not trained and they are many and are not catered for, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated. When our families are not planned for, first, the woman has frequent pregnancies. That increase maternal morbidity and mortality. If the children are not catered for, there will be malnutrition, diseases; infant mortality also increases among others," the Medical Director urged.

One of the families who obtain services at the newly-refurbished site, Mrs Gloria Enemona, expressed delight with the gesture and stated the facility had witnessed large turn-out of people since NURHI's intervention.

National Mirror

[Folami David]

Family planning is very essential right about now cos it's a delicate matter that needs to be attended to in Nigeria. Something has to be done and fast!